Jim Raftus: Growing up with the Russian Bear

Friday

Apr 11, 2014 at 12:01 AM

With Russia’s removal of Crimea from Ukraine, and its continuing threat to countries on its border, we early vintage Baby Boomers are experiencing bogeyman déjà vu. I was born in 1946. Nikita Khrushchev...

By Jim Raftus

With Russia’s removal of Crimea from Ukraine, and its continuing threat to countries on its border, we early vintage Baby Boomers are experiencing bogeyman déjà vu. I was born in 1946. Nikita Khrushchev was selected — elected just doesn’t sound right — first secretary and premier of the Soviet Union when I was 7. Short, stocky, bald and as coarse as sandpaper, Khrushchev was a cartoonish bad guy to young Americans, without the humor. He projected brute strength and malevolent intent.

We saw him as the man who could push a button and send an entire third grade class ducking under our far too flimsy desks. We glimpsed him on grainy black-and-white television news reports. We saw him proudly viewing the seemingly endless parade of tanks and troops rolling through Red Square with the menacing hammer-and-sickle flags waving in the cold Moscow wind. He was the Great Russian Bear, and it was scary. Occasionally he’d be shown with his common-law wife, Nina, who wore crude, peasant clothing for almost every outing.

In 1958, Khrushchev warned an invited group of Western diplomats in Moscow that “we will bury you.” Although he meant it as a societal/economic prediction, an 11-year-old boy could only picture shovels and grave sites. It was all bizarre and troubling.

It was also a time of frightening advances in the technology of mayhem. Intercontinental ballistic missiles meant destruction might only be hours away. ICBMs were pointed across vast expanses of oceans by both the Soviet Union and America. Having a World War II hero, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, as our president helped to somewhat allay our fears.

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first successful earth-orbiting satellite, and our paranoia literally went out of this world. How did this seemingly backward communist country beat America into space? Would they drop gamma rays from the sky?

Suddenly our math classes seemed longer and more intense. Paranoia ran deep (thank you, Buffalo Springfield). Was the addition of fluoride to our water supply a communist plot to slowly poison our citizens? Was that reclusive neighbor who worked for IBM, and had a telescope, a Russian spy? Don’t worry, Joe McCarthy will get him.

Real-life events added to the chill of the Cold War. On May 1, 1960, an American CIA U-2 pilot, Gary Francis Powers, was shot down over Russia and captured during his spy mission.

Perhaps the ultimate Khrushchev moment occurred on Oct. 12, 1960, when the Soviet prime minister took off his shoe before the United Nations General Assembly and repeatedly banged it violently on his desk to protest a delegate’s remarks about Russia’s actions in Eastern Europe.

The U.S. Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban missile standoff between Khrushchev and the new, young American president, John Kennedy, and other incidents kept the Cold War from thawing.

In fact, in September 1968, when I reported for the first day of my two-year stint at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, I was sent to speak to the company commander as part of my orientation.

“Do you know why we are here, Specialist Raftus?”

“To work in the supply section of this infantry unit, sir,” I replied.

The captain continued: “After the balloon goes off there will still be a ground war, Raftus, and do you know where the closest Rooskies are?”

“No, sir.” I replied, not wanting to sound like a know-it-all.

“They are right across the Bering Straits, and the first place they will head is to Alaska. We are here to make sure they don’t cross the straits.”

Khrushchev was long gone, retired to a dacha in a remote part of Russia. Leonid Brezhnev was their guy. Lyndon Johnson was finishing out his final year. But the Cold War remained. The scared young boy peeking under his bed in Pawtucket for bogeymen had an Army-issued M-14 in storage in Anchorage, Alaska.

Now, four decades later, after a long run of peace and perestroika with Russia, another bald, slightly taller Russian leader is rattling the dusty old sabres. Putin’s carving of Crimea from Ukraine has some irony. Khrushchev was raised in the Ukraine and began his political climb there. In fact, he was the one who handed off Crimea to Ukraine in 1954.

I worry that my 8- and 5-year-old grandchildren may soon be peeking under their beds in North Carolina looking for the new Russian bogeyman.

Jim Raftus (jraftus@aol.com) is a retired marketing director who lives in Cumberland.